The 18th Annual Symposium of The Protein Society: Protein Structure, Function and Disease will be held August 14-18, 2004 at the Marriott Hotel and Marina, San Diego, California. The goal of this symposium is to provide the very latest most exciting research in protein science related to various diseases. The session on Folding and disease includes the relation of mis-folding to Alzheimers, Crutzfeld-Jakob, cystic fibrosis, deficiencies in coagulation, and diabetes. Participants consist of scientists active in all aspects of protein science. Included are senior scientists, post docs, and students. In addition to the speakers, selected on the basis of their current exciting research and an effort to include significant numbers of women, foreign speakers, and minorities, opportunities exist for submission of abstracts to be presented as posters. Ten of the abstracts from graduate students are selected for an award and four are selected for an oral presentation. Abstracts are published in a supplement to Protein Science. Topics in the sessions include: Bioinformatics, Peptide chemistry, Protein stability/formulation, HIV, Drug transporters, Mechanism of the toxicity response, Breast cancer and recombination, Folding and disease, Malaria, Antibiotics and ribosome function, Protein engineering inside the cell, Solution biophysics, and Tuberculosis.